In machine grinding operations, it is necessary to dress the face of the grinding wheel to assure the proper shape of the part to be ground (the workpiece) and to prepare or restore the surface of the grinding wheel to optimize its cutting ability and to insure that the quality of finish imparted to a workpiece is high.
Conventionally, cutting wheels are dressed with a variety of tools, such as steel cutters, abrasive wheels, or techniques such as crush dressing are used. One means for dressing wheels in the past comprises using a rigid stick of abrasive material bonded in a hard matrix. These depend on the mechanical strength and hardness of the matrix and require continuous, forced application to break the conventional bonding material back away from the diamond, cubic boron nitride, aluminum oxide, silicon carbide or other materials used as the abrading materials in the wheels. See, for example, Abrams, U.S. Pat. No. 3,508,533.
Conventional sticks must be used with considerable force and this leads to economic losses caused by breakage and possible injury to the operator.
In addition, the force necessary with conventional sticks precludes their use in dressing form wheels where force destroys the form.
Moreover, conventional dressing of wheels in centerless grinders is economically disadvantageous because the time required is measured in hours.
An entirely new concept of wheel dressing has now been discovered which obviates the disadvantages of conventional dressing of grinding wheels of any size or form.